A Challenge to Enviros

America's environmental movement has failed and should die as soon as possible so something better can take its place. Or at least so argues a provocative insider essay that has set tongues wagging and tempers flaring at the movement's highest levels. Titled "The Death of Environmentalism" (available at www.thebreakthrough.org), the 12,000-word essay was written by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, a publicist and a pollster who boast a combined twenty years of experience working for some of the movement's most prominent organizations and donors. The essay was released at the October meeting of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, whose 250 members provide much of the movement's operating funds. "A lot of people are talking about it," says Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust and a critic of the essay. "But the last way to influence people is to start by saying everything you're doing is wrong."

In an interview, Shellenberger and Nordhaus retreat somewhat from the death rhetoric that even some supporters think was over the top. "Do NRDC and the other big groups need to close their doors? No," says Shellenberger. "But they desperately need to rethink how they do their work." Not only has the movement been unable to prevent George W. Bush's rollback of existing environmental protections, the writers argue; it is not making fast enough progress against the overarching threat of our era, global climate change. The reason, the authors assert, is environmentalism's allegiance to single-issue politics and technical-fix solutions.

"We wrote this essay after years of being hired by environmental groups to sell their solutions to the American public," says Shellenberger. "And we got tired of promoting ten-point plans for emissions caps and fuel efficiency that may appeal to policy wonks but don't engage the ordinary citizens you have to reach to effect real change." Technical fixes simply aren't sufficient to deal with climate change, species loss, deforestation or other major environmental threats, says Nordhaus. "The entire global economy has to be transformed," he says, "which is a much bigger problem than environmentalism has faced in the past." Meanwhile, Shellenberger adds, "we've lost all three branches of government to the hard right, which is hostile to the entire environmental project."

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